Lüdérc Sisters

Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbs and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.
—Brassaï

Lily & Lena Taragoš, “The Lüdérc Sisters”

Clan: Ravnos
Affiliation: Byzantium Coven
Role: Assistant Managers of Club Byzantium

Lily and Lena are a frightening pair of twins conjoined at the hip. Although they are physically beautiful, with gypsy features touched by Hungarian blood, the inhuman manner in which they move, converse, and interact is deeply unsettling. They share a psychic link, speaking together as one, or sometimes trading sentences back and forth; and the queasy coordination of their eight limbs could not be described as un-spiderlike. Although they could easily be divided by any fledgling Tzimisce, the very thought is contrary to their fundamental nature—Lily and Lena consider themselves to be a unified whole. It is a relationship with obvious parallels to Venus and Orchid, who adores the twins dearly.

History

Surprisingly, their history is not entirely tragic, and their childhood might even be called happy. Born in Transylvania in 1899, the conjoined infants were abandoned outside a gypsy settlement when they were three months old, tags hanging from their necks reading “Lacramioara” and “Elenuta.” Raised on the road by the Taragoš family, the twins were exposed to a life of music, dance, and performance, albeit tempered by hardship, privation, and prejudice. By the time Lily and Lena were young girls, the sisters had perfected their act. Capitalizing on their psychic connection, one sister would wear a blindfold and the other a gag. The muted sister would be shown various objects, and the blindfolded sister would proudly declare what they were. Once the twins reached puberty, they discovered they could share physical sensations, too, and quietly began exploring a clandestine world of sex, drugs, and light S&M.

In 1925, the troupe was passing through Timișoara when the sisters caught the attention of Kiril Katranjiev, a Ravnos anarchist running from Bulgarian authorities after committing a series of political assassinations. Kiril was beautiful but heartless, and seduced the sisters, stealing them from their family and promising to take them to Paris. At first the Ravnos was a wonderful lover, treating them with respect and sharing them equally. It was Kiril who named them “The Lüdérc Sisters,” comparing them to the succubus of Hungarian mythology. But somewhere along the way Kiril grew bored, and his devotion curdled into cynicism. He began exploiting the twins, treating them roughly and pimping them under the pretense of “communizing” their love. Their performances grew increasingly depraved, and talk of Paris faded into the past.

One night in Szeged the trio bilked the locals, making off with a gold candlestick from the village church. Taking refuge from a thunderstorm in a neighboring graveyard, Kiril glanced upon his huddled lovers and was gripped by a sudden surge of fatal revulsion. He selected a pair of Tarot cards and cheerfully fanned them face-down in front of the unsuspecting sisters. Lacramioara drew Death, and Elenuta flipped over the Tower. The Ravnos bound and gagged Lena, then closed his teeth around Lily’s throat and savagely drained her blood. He hacked open Lily’s chest and spattered his vitae across her stuttering heart, then kicked their conjoined body in an open grave and stuffed it with muddy earth. Expecting that Lily would be forced to devour her conjoined twin to survive, Kiril painted “Tonight Only! Come See The Human Oroboros!” on the lid of a cigar tin and nailed it to the black locust tree leaning over the grave. Indifferent to the rain, he sat with his back against a headstone and prepared to applaud the final performance of the Lüdérc Sisters. Toward dawn, Kiril spotted a band of angry villagers sloshing towards the graveyard, complete with torches and pitchforks. Forced to flee the medieval spectacle, Kiril left the sisters to their entombed fate.

It was a mistake, and Kiril was wrong about the Embrace. Both sisters died that night, and were reborn closer than ever. As one, they burrowed their way to the surface, the Ravnos blood singing in their veins. They tracked Kiril to a midwifery school in Szolnok and burned him at the stake while the women watched in horror. As their incredulous Sire pleaded for mercy, they hooted in derision—“You only murdered our ‘other names,’ beloved. You never knew our true self!” Wrenching his smoldering heart from his charred body, they mashed it into the tin cigar box and used one of Kiril’s teeth to plug the nail hole.

The Lüdérc Sisters finally made it to Paris, where they became a minor sensation, performing in Montmartre and befriending Violette Morris and Gyula “Brassaï” Halász. They courted friends and allies from the Parisian Toreador as well as the Sabbat, but the latter asked fewer questions about their Sire. The Sabbat was also more accommodating to their darker desires, and soon the sisters added bloodletting to their quotidian vices of sex, absinthe, and morphine. They usually combined feeding with sex, and were careful to murder only humans they found deserving. For reasons that hardly require Freudian analysis, this list was topped by traitors, sadists, and rapists. Emmanuel Mammon helped the sisters escaped Paris before the Nazi occupation, relocating them to New York City under the care of Grenadier Toil. Their exotic appearance and tart personality charmed the Gotham Sabbat, and several covens readily opened their doors; but only one operated the Dakinī Club, and the Lüdérc Sisters found a home with Venus and Orchid. When Venus was appointed the ductus of her own coven, she placed Lily and Lena in charge of the human hetaerae of Byzantium, tutoring them in the erotic arts and maintaining discipline among the ranks.

Current Role

Lily and Lena have continued to refine their own peculiar talents, coming to an understanding of the human body that approaches the supernatural. With four arms, two heads, and ostensibly one mind, Lily and Lena are endowed with remarkable abilities to bestow pleasure and pain. Though their eerily synchronized manner and tone of haughty bitchiness can be off-putting, the twins are in great demand as lovers, and their shared nervous system amplifies their own sensations exponentially. This addiction to sensuality is more Daeva than Ravnos, but few doubt the origin of the cruel and cunning blood running through their veins. Lily and Lena rarely keep a paramour longer than a week, and prefer humans to Cainites—humans are more “eager.” The hetaerae regard them with an equal mixture of fear and awe, and even Ingo and Naamah find it best to adopt a position of reverent submission. The sisters make their home in Byzantium, their lavish apartment decorated with Parisian posters, Brassaï photographs, and their most prized possession—a corroded tin box bearing the blackened heart of their creator, his mocking scrawl still legible on its dented cover.

Sources & Notes

The core of the Gotham Sabbat was first uploaded on 31 October 2000, but the Byzantium Coven was extensively revised during the August 2018 update. Lily and Lena were loosely inspired by Daisy and Violet Hilton, a pair of conjoined sisters who made a name for themselves in Vaudeville and starred in Tod Browning’s Freaks. Although the sisters had several scandalous affairs and worked in burlesque, they retired to operate a hot dog stand, a slightly different fate. The synchronized mannerisms I give to Lily and Lena are inspired by the conjoined twins in the film The City of Lost Children. The banner image uses a historical photograph of Daisy and Violet Hilton, and the second image is a 1932 Brassaï photograph taken at Suzy, a famous brothel in the Latin Quarter.

Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 31 October 2000
Last Modified: 18 August 2018
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]